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Poster:
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WHARFRAT |
Date:
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October 21, 2008 11:57:09am |
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Forum:
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GratefulDead
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Subject:
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Re: Mp3 Conversion Question |
kochman, If listening to songs on a computer or mp3 player
your not gonna hear the difference. On a high end stereo
system you can hear the difference. Take a show and burn to cd
both lossless and mp3. You will here the difference. vbr mp3's top out at a bit rate of 320 kbps. While Flac and shn files are at a bit rate 1411 kbps.
And like it's been said never convert mp3 to lossless.
You can't put the toothpaste back in the tube.
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Poster:
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spacedface |
Date:
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October 21, 2008 12:34:24pm |
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Forum:
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GratefulDead
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Subject:
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Re: Mp3 Conversion Question |
Most people don't have sterophile equipment or even good headphones for their audiophile-capable (flash) iPods.
I have some poor / low-tech friends and I've label MP3/lossless discs accordingly. The 256k MP3s sound great through aging stereos even if played through a cheap DVD player. The Archive's been a boon to them too, without much effort on my part.
This post was modified by spacedface on 2008-10-21 19:34:24
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Poster:
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kochman |
Date:
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October 21, 2008 04:03:11pm |
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Forum:
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GratefulDead
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Subject:
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Re: Mp3 Conversion Question |
For the record, I have a great stereo system... with Bose speakers.
I would just like to conduct the test to put the controversy to bed once and for all...
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Poster:
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Lou Davenport |
Date:
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October 22, 2008 03:15:25pm |
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Forum:
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GratefulDead
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Subject:
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Re: Mp3 Conversion Question |
Hey Kochman! My 2 cents:
320 sure sounds better than 128 or 192. Still, it sounds a bit smoother and simpler than lossless. But even on a really good stereo, I need to listen closely to pick out the lost details. I've never done a blind test of that, largely because blind tests are really tiring and kind of cumbersome to arrange. Also, there's often not one particular difference so much as a more natural sound and a better sense of space in the lossless.
What you most want to listen for is not the tones themselves so much as the timbre of the instruments, the separation between sounds, and the ambient noise. It's clearest on acoustic recordings.
That said, even decent sounding non-commercial SBDs have been subtly distorted enough at one or another stage in their history that I wouldn't be eager to use them as test material to distinguish 320 from lossless. I'd start with a nice commercial release from the 70s, or maybe Wake of the Flood.
Most FLACs compress to 550-700kbps, so 320 has about half as much information, which isn't that far away considering the efficiency of mp3 compression.
Bose speakers are more mid-fi than hi-fi, though still a hell of a lot better than the crappy equipment most people listen with these days.
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